First war: Number of opponents and goal question.

[automator]

Up to this point, I've always kept my first war focused on one opponent with the goal of wiping them off the face of the earth.

Today I decided to diversify. With my first war I sent war groups of 3-4 units to three neighboring civs (standard size map), with the goal of crippling them. Seems like it's working. It's almost 1000 AD and each are stuck at a tiny size, they're all following my religion, and are so far behind in tech that I'm wiping them out when I start the game again.

The advantage to multiple enemies, I suppose, is that I'm causing hurt to more than one civ. In other games, I would crush one while the other neighbors surpassed me because they weren't spending money on a war. The advantage to only crippling, then, is that I'm redirecting my efforts to science before non-warring civs get a leg up on me.

Finally, I have the advantage that rather than expanding in one direction (and ending up with a long and thin empire), I'm ending up expanding outwards like a balloon. My interior cities are now nicely protected by a buffer so I can leave them with just a token unit to keep the happiness.

Anyone use this strategy? Like I said, it's still relatively early in the game, so I may find that it was a poor choice. (Not likely, since I'm tech leader around the world, the largest civ, and point leader.)

 

[Sjaramei]

Game speed/difficulty?

I usually take 2 civs with axes if i play marathon. Let em keep crap cities and sue for peace just to get the good spots yourself. (go after another civ)

But if you can pull off doing 3 civs at once, it's of course all good
If it works all is good

(remember land is power, you can be behind early on, but you will steamroll past them later with enough commerce/production power)

 

[automator]

Thanks for reassuring me.

I play on Epic. I haven't tried Marathon, and everything else seems too quick.

I played for a bit today. Took out Cyrus and started to whittle back Elizabeth. In the time since our last war, she's befriended Asoka (the only other on our continent who's power comes close to mine) and has become a worthy rival. But I just picked up calvary, so I'll mow her down, then take out Asoka, leaving just Hannibal on the continent. Hannibal is my buddy, so after Asoka I have to decide to take out my buddy, Julius, or my other buddy Bismark.